


Practice Makes Perfect

by c3childs



Series: The Long Con [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-11
Updated: 2012-06-11
Packaged: 2017-11-07 12:40:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/431310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/c3childs/pseuds/c3childs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mai is the ever obedient wife.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Practice Makes Perfect

Mai was very good at following orders. She has had years of practice, first her mother, Azula, now Long Feng who was apparently Lord of the Ghouls. And the Ghoul Lord had told her to behave.   
  
A Joo Dee laid out a set of traditional, proper Earth Kingdom apparel for someone of her noble status. After she refused to leave and kept  _smiling_ , Mai reluctantly changed clothes and watched the slave take her clothes away.

When there was a great crash of stone from somewhere outside, Mai stopped carving kanji into the wooden chair arm and listened.

Mai had heard the rumors that the Avatar was in the city, along with his companions. When she’d been looking around for something to do earlier, she’d also read the reports concerning his sky bison that was somewhere in the base.

It was still a pleasant surprise when the Water Tribe warrior boy poked his head through the doorway because Mai hadn’t had a live target in a very long while. Birds didn’t count.

Mai, as any good wife should, shot a hail of arrows straight at the intruder’s bright, blue eye. In a display of impressive reflexes, he dived forward and missed being turned into a pincushion. Less impressive was his landing, sprawled on the ground.

“Whoa! Hey!”

“Hi,” Mai said, knives suddenly resting  between her fingers. “How’s it going?”

“Oh, well. You know.”

“Totally.”

She flung one of the knives at his hand, and he lunged forward, scrambled to hands and feet and awkwardly evaded the rest of the knives then dove behind a very ugly lounge chair.

“Wait, wait, wait!” he called from behind the chair.

Arm pulled back, Mai waited.

“Can we talk about this?”

“Talk about you snooping in my personal quarters? Yes, let’s talk about that.”

Briefly, she wondered where the ghouls were but dismissed their inattentiveness as her gain.

“Okay, yes. Talking is good, much better than you trying to impale me, yes. I’m just looking for the Earth King.”

“He’s not in here.”

“I figured.”

“He’s probably in that one room with the pretentiously large door.”  
“Large door?” he asked, peeking cautiously over the chair.

“You’ll know it when you see it, believe me.”

“Okay, and where is that from here?”

“It’s down the…” she trailed off, lowering her arm and reassuring the boy enough to stand fully upright. “You’re not going to try and kill him or kidnap him, are you?”

“What? No! That’s crazy talk, and we’ll not engage in that. I just need to talk to him about something.”

This, Mai realized, had the potential to be interesting. But the Ghoul Lord wanted her to stay though it hadn’t been an order. And Azula wanted her to tell her about all of the interesting things and that  _had_  been an order.

“Let’s go,” she said and walked past the nervous-looking warrior.

He fell into step with her, what he must consider a safe distance.

Ha.

“So you got a name?”

“Yes.”

“…’kay.”


End file.
